One thing leads to another and before you know it, you're a food blogger!

I wrote the following and submitted it to the Bournemouth Echo for my regular Taste blog, but it appears to have been missed.  So as not to waste a few good words, I thought I'd post it here instead.

Can't be us - too many kids!

Hubby made an observation recently, one that I’ve thought a couple of times in recent months but hadn’t vocalised.  He said “we're so lucky, really, in that for the last couple of years almost every night we've had something different for dinner.  Not everyone can claim that!” – and it’s true.

Obviously, an awful lot of this has been driven by the requirement to keep posting recipes to Rhubarb & Ginger.  However, it also met a need – in fact, more than one need – although I wouldn’t recommend it as a way forward for everyone!

I can vividly remember the days when we would shop once a week, during which I would float rather aimlessly around the supermarket looking for “things that look nice”, “things that are affordable” and “things that you can do things with”.  On very few occasions were these three requirements satisfied.  We would wind up with a freezer full of mince, pies, sausages and pre-prepared foods like Chicken Kiev or lamb grills.  Not surprisingly, when it came to thinking about what to prepare for dinner that night, inspiration was lacking.

Hubby and I would sit in our kitchen, looking at the fridge and freezer and contemplate what we had that we fancied eating.  The response was usually “nothing” and we’d wind up with mince (again) or sausages (again).

This sad state of affairs was what spawned the meal plan that now is a fundamental part of running the household.  Yes, it can be a drag to have to sit down and plan out seven meals each week, but these days I lighten the load by collecting interesting recipes as and when I see them.  You probably don’t want to know about my filing system for potential recipes and I won’t embarrass myself by telling you about it.

So I started meal planning as a way of varying our diet and introducing interest into the process of eating.  After all, we have to do it – so why not enjoy it?

Around this time (probably some 4-5 years ago) I became aware of the increasingly popular process of blogging.

Now I’ve always been the type of person who would talk to anyone who will talk back, plus I’ve always liked the creative process behind the composition of a written piece of work and have a fascination for the English language – so blogging was absolutely made for me.

I began, as people often do, by writing a social blog recounting the day’s happenings within the family – which included food.  Very quickly, I realised that the recipes I shared were very popular and before very long, the recipes were taking over.

Enter “Jenny Eatwell’s Rhubarb & Ginger” blog.

I started writing it back in July 2009 and can remember being utterly blown away when my page views for the month achieved the heady heights of 200.  These days, the blog is attracting in excess of 12,000 page views in a month and some days, I feel as though it is driving me instead of the other way around!

Thinks .. is it "it's", or is it "its" ... hmmn ..

There are many good things about writing my food blog and, more recently, writing for the Bournemouth Echo.  Not least is the challenge of reclaiming a command of language following on from a stroke/seizure a couple of years ago.  I have no doubt that the act of trying to string together an intelligible sentence has been fundamental in my recovery – along with just pure & simply providing me with something to do, now that I have such limited mobility.

Then there are the people involved.  I’ve talked to some lovely people via the comments section of the blog and also via Twitter.  I would hesitate to call these people true “friends”, as they are unlikely to come to my aid should I require ferrying to the shops one day.  However, I’d like to think that the regular readers are as much friends as it is possible for them to be, in the circumstances.

I’ve been involved in some hugely interesting and fun P.R. campaigns through the blog, for people like Knorr, Barefoot Wines and South African Fruit and long may that continue.

"What would you do without me, eh?", says Rosie

The blog has taken me to places that I would never have visited, without there being some blog-orientated demand.  We wouldn’t have our Jack Russell terrier, Rosie, if it hadn’t have been for a contact made through the blog!

However, because it is a food blog, consideration of the benefits derived from writing for Rhubarb & Ginger has to include the cooking.  I’d like to think that my command of the cooker, understanding of preparation processes and flavour combinations (oh dear, there I go sounding like Greg Wallace) has been advanced in some leaps and bounds.

One thing is sure – we never sit and contemplate the fridge and freezer, wondering what to have for dinner any more!

Bournemouth Echo blog "Jenny's Week" : The stir-fry that isn't a stir-fry, until it is!

The following blog entry can be seen in situ here. 

The stir-fry that isn't a stir-fry, until it is!

All of which is because my son is vehemently anti stir fries.  Mind you, he appears to be becoming anti anything remotely sweet and sour too, which is a great shame.

Being a just-on-the-verge-of-teenage lad, he’s developing a nice line in vegetable avoidance.  He’s decided he doesn’t like casseroles (which have vegetables in the mix), or the said stir fries (which have vegetables cooked with the meat, that are ~horrors~ still crunchy) and will visibly blanche when faced with a salad.

He much prefers non-vegetable meals like chilli con carne, or spaghetti Bolognese.  Which is a shame, really, as his Mum is as vehemently pro-vegetables as he is vehemently agin them.

However, we persevere.  I figure that if I keep on serving up the right portions of vegetables, he’ll get used to seeing them on his plate and teenage hunger might win over teenage pickiness.  I do try to avoid things that I know he just can’t countenance, like mushrooms, cooked tomatoes or aubergine, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t appear in certain recipes.  Take, for instance, the absolutely gorgeous Greek Lamb & Orzo Bake that we had for dinner last night.

The recipe involves lamb mince cooked with onion, garlic & aubergine, then with stock, tinned tomatoes and mint.  You then mix in some cooked orzo (which is rice-shaped tiny pasta, for those who were wondering) and put the mixture into a dish to bake, topped off with an egg/greek yoghurt mixture that sets and creates a lovely tangy topping.

There are two things in this recipe that son doesn’t like – aubergines and tomatoes.  Neither is avoidable, as they’re both fundamental ingredients.  However, the tomatoes will cook down and become part of the general saucy melange, whereas the aubergine will stay in chunks.  So, when I was adding it to the baking dish, I just chased most of the aubergine away into the other three quarters of the dish.  I served it with baby sweetcorn and sugar snap peas, and the lot disappeared.  Job done.

I reckon that one of my jobs as a parent, is to broaden my son’s horizons on as many different subjects as possible.  Hence, I refuse to be cowed by his likes and dislikes where food is concerned and I also refuse to cater just for him, while his Dad and I eat something else.  Case in point is son’s new friend, who was in the house when lunchtime struck.  Hubby offered him a sandwich, and he asked for chocolate spread.  Now, although I have nothing against chocolate spread and indeed we have some in the house which is brought out at breakfast time and stays with breakfast time, a lunchtime sandwich for boys consists of something savoury, accompanied by cucumber and tomato and maybe a packet of crisps.  So we went through all the choices : cheese (no), marmite (no), fish paste (no), ham?  We suspect he just accepted ham out of a desperate desire to please rather than anything else, as his sandwich came back with two bites taken out of it, no cucumber eaten, or tomato – and even the crisps came back “because they’re beef”.

I just couldn’t imagine my son doing the same thing to someone else.  Plus, the thought that this little lad (who was the size of a whippet – and is it any wonder?) would only eat chocolate spread in a sandwich, left me feeling really quite sad.

When hubby mentioned how glad he was that our son wasn’t like that, I just had to say that it’s because we’ve trained him that way.

So, to get back to the stir-fry that isn’t, until it is, this refers to a Pork & Pepper stir fry that we had one day last week.

I knew that if I wrote “Pork & Pepper stir-fry” up on the menu list for the week, I’d set up a resistance in our son’s mind.  That resistance would manifest in a large case of the “I don’t like <insert name of foodstuff>”.  So, I called it just “Pork steaks & pepper”.  All was calm.  Right up until he came into the kitchen and spotted the Fish Sauce, Soy Sauce, sesame seeds and sliced red & yellow peppers.  “Oh”, he said.  “It’s a Chinese something then?” sounding really disappointed.

“Marginally”, was my reply, hedging my bets.

The end result was that he ate the pork, about a third of the peppers and all of the jasmine rice.  He did declare that he “didn’t like the sweet and sour flavour, because of the vinegar”.  I just couldn’t resist informing him that there was no vinegar involved in this one – just soy sauce, fish sauce, lime juice and honey.

I wouldn’t say it was a win:win situation, but hey – he got fed and hubby and I think the recipe has got to be one of the nicest stir fry recipes we’ve tried in a very long time.

Now, I’ve just got to work out how to try to get some of the lovely watercress salads past him.

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Gnocchi, fritters and kidneys - you don't get much more varied, than that!

 The following blog can be seen in situ here.

Even though I do a weekly menu plan, sometimes life just conspires against me and insists on throwing all my plans into disarray.  I’d had a big taste of that disarray last week, which meant that two recipes had been carried over to this week.  Then, not satisfied with the confusion it had already created, disarray attacked at the end of the current week, causing us to have sandwiches instead of a lovely steak & kidney pie – which got put in the fridge until the following day.

The first recipe that got carried over was a Pot Roasted Chicken (which are always gorgeous).  This one was to be accompanied by some gnocchi and tender stem broccoli, in a parmesan cream sauce.

I’ve not had a good track record with gnocchi – which is odd, considering I really like anything even remotely connected with a potato.  Gnocchi have always seemed to me to be nasty glutinous little lumps of wallpaper paste with little or no flavour.  So this was, pretty much, their last swansong before being consigned to the “don’t like it” pile.

I was using ready-made gnocchi and I do acknowledge that homemade gnocchi stand the change of being far superior – if you get them right.  However, this dish had one thing in its favour before we began, which was that it was so quick and easy.  Basically, while the tender stems & gnocchi are cooking, you cook garlic and chilli in butter, add some stock, crème fraiche and parmesan to make a sauce.  Combine everything and you’re there.

The chicken was tender and moist, the broccoli and gnocchi were fresh and delicious.

I do have to add a rider at this stage, though, which is that I feel that the gnocchi and broccoli dish would be far better with some boiled bacon or gammon, than the chicken.  So, the next time a piece of bacon hoves into view, I’ll be reaching for the gnocchi.

So.  Having had one half of a chicken, it begged the question of what to do with the remainder.

I had seen a recipe for some carrot fritters that had intrigued me.  Fried food is not something that I do very often (for all sorts of reasons) and as a consequence I’m something of a novice as regards pancakes and fritters.  However, this recipe just made my mouth water and had to be done.  I originally planned to serve it beside the cold cooked chicken, right up until a Coronation Chicken thought struck me.

The fritters contained fresh coriander and ground cumin, both of which would sit very well beside the curry spices of Coronation Chicken, so yet another sudden change of plan happened.

Once again, the fritters are a simple matter of grating carrot, adding flour, cumin, egg, some chopped onion and some crumbled feta cheese.  Spoon big spoonfuls into a non-stick frying pan and, within a minute or so, you’ve got your fritters.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed them – and they did indeed go admirably well with Coronation Chicken served on a bed of mixed lettuce.

Our Sunday dinner was intended to be this week’s piece de resistance.  I’d bought a lovely piece of brisket of beef, along with three kidneys (except four kidneys arrived in the bag) to make a lovely steak and kidney pie.  It wasn’t going to be a traditional pie with pastry top and bottom, nor a pudding with suet crust all around.  It was going to be something of a halfway house, with a top crust being suet-based much in the same way as a Teviot pie.  I suppose, it could be classed as a Steak & Kidney Teviot pie, if you wanted to be particular about its name.

Unfortunately, time ran away with me on Sunday afternoon (so much so, that I was doing my online shopping at 10pm) and the meat for the pie went into the oven at least an hour and half later than it should do.  Being brisket, the writing was on the wall there and then.

At 6pm – dinner time – I tried the meat and found it to be crunchy.  Not tough, not bouncy, the teeth went through it okay – but it had an odd crunch to it.  Definitely not done.

So, out came a tin of tuna and we all had sandwiches.

Next day, and we’ve just eaten the Steak & Kidney Teviot – and according to my son, if zero marks where a shop-bought Steak & Kidney begins, then this is (moving his hands apart as far away as they would go) about here – and, engage thrusters – even further.  I think, no, I know that he liked it.  So did I – I doubt I will ever use a shop-bought steak & kidney anything from now on.  Worlds apart.

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Bournemouth Echo "Taste" Blog : From failure to success!

This blog can be seen in situ here

You may remember that last week’s blog ended on my expressing a hope that the weekend’s fare would yield better results than had the previous few days.  Well, my mojo returned and I’m pleased to say that it all went really very well.

The Oriental Beef & Butternut Squash we had on Sunday evening was, quite simply, a triumph.  What made it especially good was that it purported to be a low-calorie meal.  Well, if all low calorie meals tasted as amazing as that one, we’d all be stick thin!

The use of beef brisket in the dish is a sneakily wonderful idea, as brisket tends to be a fairly lean cut of meat – made even better by judicious trimming during preparation.  I cooked it for rather longer than was dictated by the recipe, as I wanted to avoid any chance of it being rubbery.   The extra-long cooking time worked a treat and the meat just fell apart.  With the star anise, the five spice, fresh ginger, orange juice and soy combining into a beautiful rich, dark, aromatic sauce, you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps you wouldn’t bother with the butternut squash.  However, when it came to eating, the butternut squash provided that stroke of difference to the textures that kept your brain interested while your tongue went into rhapsodies over the flavours.

Next on the list of lovelies, comes the Cheesy Celeriac Slice.  It’s a fairly ordinary name for something so wonderful.  I have to blow my own trumpet here a bit (I hope you’ll forgive) and say that the recipe is my own adaptation of a standard cheese & potato pasty.  Bearing in mind hubby’s total dislike for all things potato, I set my mind to wondering what would make an admirable understudy – and I instantly hit up on the gnarly charms of the celeriac.  Celeriac will cook like potato, mash like potato and basically do everything that potato would do, in this recipe.  Plus, celery in cheese sauce is one of my all-time favourites and as the two main ingredients were to be celeriac and cheese, I was sold.  I used two cheeses – approximately 200g ordinary strong white cheddar, grated, plus another 200g of a lovely red Leicester, diced very small.  Stirred into the mashed celeriac with chopped spring onions, a little Dijon mustard and a good dash of cayenne pepper, they made a rather odd-looking filling for the puff pastry.

However, once the lot had been cooking in the oven for around 15 minutes, everyone in the house had gathered around like the Bisto kids, with their noses in the air.  I have got to say that it made an inordinate amount – we all ate it cold for lunch the next day – but it was as good cold as it had been hot and served with baked beans.  Very definitely a “do it again” job!

Wednesday brought about our next big success, which was a slow-braised pork with cider, crème fraiche and mustard recipe.  I used some of our local butcher’s pork steaks, which cooked up beautifully.  The recipe recommended the use of pork shoulder but being leery of the amount of fat involved, I opted for their somewhat leaner loin steaks.

The cider I opted for was a single variety cider that is big on flavour and stands up very well to the onions and pork flavours.  Bolstered with a little Dijon mustard (what would we do, without Dijon?) and enrichened with a little low-fat crème fraiche, it really was glorious.  It really couldn’t have been any easier to make, either.

The really big accolades, however, should go to hubby for his Asparagus & Prosciutto risotto, which he crafted with love and skill for our dinner last night.

It is really magical – I think – how the use of the right kind of rice, some vegetable stock, a bunch of asparagus and a little prosciutto ham (basically) can result in such a taste-bud pleaser.

He had used the inedible woody ends of the asparagus to enrichen the vegetable stock as well as making the stock with the water from blanching the asparagus tips.  All of which gave the asparagus pride of place in the chorus of delicious flavours.  It was fresh, light, deliciously salty and perfectly creamy.  Personally, I don’t think he’s ever made a better risotto, this one could definitely be right up there if ever he were to have to name a signature dish!

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Bournemouth Echo "Taste" Blog : Just not quite right ...

Disapproving bunny disapproves of this week's menu

Everything we’ve had for our evening meal this week has proven to be just not quite right.

I don’t mean that everything has been horrible, or inedible – far from it.  Some things have been really quite nice, but just not quite right.  Something has been missing from them flavour-wise, or the cooking technique has missed somewhere along the line, or the flavours haven’t been to my preference.

All of which makes me sound terribly pretentious, but I do try to cook dishes to the best of my ability.  Sometimes I’m let down by a poor recipe – one that sounded great in first read-through, but during the cooking, or at the final tasting stage, just hasn’t quite met with expectations.  Sometimes I’m let down by the ingredients – like when the potatoes for a lovely mash just turn to water in the saucepan.  Sometimes I let myself down – like when I know I should be allowing two and a half hours to cook something, then get sidetracked by the washing machine refusing to work – and land up with just an hour!

My culinary week begins on a Tuesday, when I do the shopping.  This last Tuesday, because of various commitments throughout the day that I knew would leave me with little energy by the evening, I had booked in our son’s favourite meal – pizza.  You wouldn’t think that could go wrong at all, would you?  Well, we tried a new pizza.  It was supposed to be ciabatta based, with an assortment of meat products on board, as well as the usual tomato and cheese.  However, they didn’t mention the stealthy pieces of rosemary that were sneakily sprinkled around.  Every so often, you would get a really big hit of rosemary, a flavour that just didn’t sit well with its companions – and which spoiled the pizza for me.  I certainly won’t bother having it again.

Wednesday was to be a Beef & Cauliflower Curry, using Shin of Beef – which takes a minimum of 2 hours to cook.  I refer you back to the washing machine comment above.  Not only was dinner very late, but also the beef wasn’t as buttery as it should have been and – which I can’t quite believe I did – I forgot to include the cauliflower.  Which was an integral part of the dish.  I guess it just goes to show how distracted I was – or how bad my memory is getting!

Thursday was to have been a Chicken & Chorizo Jambalaya.  However, I felt absolutely bushed by dinnertime on Thursday and just couldn’t face the cooker.  So the Jambalaya was bumped to the next day and we had fish & chips.  (Which was very nice, thank you).

Friday evening hove into view and the Jambalaya was made.  I’m really not sure what I did – as I weighed out the amount of rice, so it should have been fine – but the rice took FOR EVER to cook and required a good 500-600ml more water than was originally cited in the recipe.  The flavours were nice, albeit very one-dimensional (even after the addition of a few ingredients to pep up the interest), and I was quite sure that if we hadn’t have been watching t.v. as we ate, I’d have left an awful lot more than I eventually did.  This one will have to go down as a “work in progress”, I think.  Perhaps a change in type of chorizo might help, and maybe the addition of some paprika – and maybe some prawns.  Or maybe I’d just be better off finding another recipe!

Saturday was hubby’s day to cook this week and he had decided to go for sausages, red cabbage & apple, together with mashed potatoes.  All of which was fine, until we got into the supermarket and found they didn’t have any red cabbages.  Nor any pre-cooked in the freezer department – and we weren’t prepared to pay through the nose for some from the pre-packed chilled department.  However, we did have a Savoy cabbage doing nothing since its meal (Bobotie – which will now happen next week) had been bumped off the menu list completely.  So, he opted to make the good old favourite of cabbage & bacon.  Which, I am pleased to say, made a great stand-in for the red cabbage.

Looking at how this week has gone, I’m getting seriously worried for the success of the Oriental Beef & Butternut Squash with fried rice that is on the menu list for Sunday!  As for the celeriac & cheese slice that’s booked in for Monday, an awful lot is resting on its vegetarian shoulders!

Bearing in mind, however, that this blog is supposed to be about the best thing I’ve eaten this week – the winner of that accolade goes to the cold pot roasted brisket of beef that I ate for lunch on Tuesday, with home-made coleslaw and a home-made chilli pickled onion.  Goodness, but that was some glorious eating!

 This post can be seen in situ online here

Bournemouth Echo "Taste" blog : "Unexpected Spices and Mmmmm-oussaka"

New post : "Unexpected Spices and Mmmmm-oussaka"

(although, if you're keeping up to date with Rhubarb & Ginger, you'll have read about these two already!).

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"Sneaky Lemon and Hubby Gets a Cob On" : Bournemouth Echo "Taste" blog

Sneaky Lemon and Hubby Gets a Cob On : blog post on Bournemouth Echo's "Taste" blog

New blog post on "Jenny's Week", Bournemouth Echo "Taste" Supplement

I won't put the whole blog post out here, as you will have read the majority

of it before, in the blog posts regarding the Quince, Apple & Carrot Muffins

and the Creamy Kabanos Pasta.

However, if you're curious, click on :

"Fancy Fruit and Smoky Sausage"

I'm Back! New blog post on "Taste" with the Bournemouth Echo.

I'm back!

New blog post on the Bournemouth Echo

If the link won't take you there : http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/blogs/taste/8623725.Jenny_s_Week__I_m_back_/

Bournemouth Echo "Taste" Blog : Fuelled by food blogs ...

With apologies for repeating myself!  You can, if you so wanted, see the original blog posting - and all my other blog posts on "Taste", here.

FUELLED BY FOOD BLOGS

It occurred to me, as I sat here making a little aide memoir of dishes I wanted to talk about, that very nearly the whole list has been provided by one food blogger or another. I’m not sure that it’s anything to brag about, but it does represent a change in my recipe-gleaning habits!

Firstly, the jewel in the crown of our new dishes this week, has been the singular success of hubby’s Bagel making enterprise. This follows a post by an Anglo/Canadian friend of mine on her blog where she details a successful recipe for Bagels. After a couple of very successful tries, Hubby thinks he has perfected the recipe  and we have (rather embarrassingly) been throwing mouldy bread away ever since.

We’ve had bagels with home made jam, cream cheese and smoked salmon, raisin & cinnamon bagels, cream cheese and ham, scrambled eggs, cheese and home made chutney (of more later) and even marmite. They are deliciously chewy, although toasting does reduce the chewiness, but increases the flavour. I doubt we will ever want for something to make a sandwich with, all the time the Bagel Baker is in session!

Secondly, I spotted a recipe for a healthy Sweet Potato & Carrot Soup from a Malaysian blogger friend. After collecting the necessary sweet potato and ginger, I made this for lunch on Saturday. I digressed a little from the original recipe, mostly because I didn’t have garlic oil to hand so fried off a little clove to begin with and, somehow or other, it seemed to make sense to add a small red chilli. For my taste, the end results were simply gorgeous - you felt virtuous as you ate it, but the chilli and ginger added such a multi-levelled warmth and kick, that it was a real riot on your tongue. Hubby opted for burgers that lunchtime, so he missed his opportunity, but Son reviewed it as follows. “A sweet soup to die for! It was mushy, but in a good way – and the chilli makes it soupy buenos!”. LOL So taken with it was he, that he wrote the review down, so that I wouldn’t forget it. *chuckle*

Photo c/o my inhouse photographer, Chillibob

Saturday afternoon was taken up with making Plum Chutney. (From James Martin, via http://www.goodfoodchannel.co.uk/). It is my first go at any kind of chutney, but having had such success with the small batch jam, I was filled with hope that the results would be good. I have to say, that apart from it being rather more “soupy” than I wanted, the flavours are terrific and it goes marvellously well with a lovely strong cheddar. In fact, we’ve got Pork Pie and Salad on the menu list for this coming week, purely so that we can have something to eat the chutney with!

It was remarkably easy to do, you began by sweating off a couple of chopped shallots, then you added the plums (500g in this case) which had been stoned and quartered, 100ml of white wine vinegar (I didn’t have white wine, so I used a mixture of 50ml Cider & 50ml Balsamic), 3 tbsp water (which I’d leave out, if I ever made it again), a half a teaspoon each of cinnamon and ground coriander, a small piece of ginger that had been grated, and 100g dark brown sugar. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then put the pan onto a high heat and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 mins or so, stirring from time to time, until the mixture thickens slightly. I didn’t go for the sterilised jars option, I just put mine into a lidded dish and now it lives in the fridge. I doubt very much that it will last long enough to go off!

Considering we were economising last week – life gets difficult after the big gurgle of Direct Debits leaves the bank account – I think we did remarkably well for new taste sensations.

However, when it came to what to have for Saturday’s dinner everyone’s hand went up when asked “hands up, who wants Sausage & Mozzarella bake?”. It is such a ridiculously simple dish, this, but it is an evergreen that we simply don’t seem to be getting bored with. The original recipe was one of Jamie Oliver’s “Food for a Fiver” recipe cards produced by Sainsbury’s. However, I felt that the tomato sauce was a bit weak, so have broadened the flavours with the addition of a few extras.

So, what you do is firstly put the sausages into the oven to bake for 25 mins. You want them to be just browned, as they’re going to cook further in the casserole dish.

While they are cooking, put a large pan of salted water on to boil and then cook some 300g of broccoli florets for no longer than 2-3 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon (reserving the cooking water for the Penne pasta) and place into the casserole dish. Place the pasta in to cook once the water is back to boiling.

In the meantime, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil in a high-sided frying pan and sweat off a chopped onion and a chopped chilli, adding a grated clove of garlic and some chopped (or dried) oregano when almost done. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato puree, another tablespoon of tomato ketchup and a splash or two of Worcester sauce. You may need to add 100ml of water, depending on how juicy the tomatoes were. Allow this to simmer gently while the pasta cooks and you chop the part-cooked sausages into four.

Ultimately, combine the sausages, pasta, broccoli and sauce together in the high-sided frying pan, mixing gently to ensure everything is covered with sauce. Decant into the casserole dish, add a layer of sliced mozzarella cheese to the top and bake in the oven at 190deg for around 30 minutes or until the cheese is golden and bubbly.

If you’re feeding a number of people, you can include a green salad or garlic bread. However as it’s just us, and none of us need the extra calories, we don’t bother.

Now, apart from the Pork Pie idea, I’m clueless about what to serve on this week’s menu. So, I reckon I’ll have to have a look on some food blogs …. *chuckle*

It's just one of those phases we go through ...

Do you find that you go through phases with the food you choose to eat? I do. For definite. I’d love to know what causes the swap from one phase to the next, because I really can’t put my finger on a reason – other than my singular lack of success at combining tomato and chilli, as per recent attempts.

This week seems to have been all about chicken and cheese. Not necessarily combined though, you understand. I see you looking somewhat relieved. *chuckle*

Well, we started off the week with a Smoked Cod Rarebit with baked cherry tomatoes. Now, apart from it winding up rather over-sauced, this was an all-round success that will be repeated at some point.

It’s also extremely easy to do, as you begin by melting butter, adding garlic, tossing the tomatoes in the garlic butter, before adding them to an oven-proof dish. Then you wilt some spinach in the remains of the butter, add a teensy bit of nutmeg and put on top of the tomatoes. Place some fillets of smoked fish (cod, in my case) on the top of the spinach and make up a thick, roux-based white sauce, to which you add some wholegrain mustard and some grated cheese. Pour this over to cover the fish and bake in a moderate oven for some 30-45 mins (depending on how thick your fish is) and serve.

I was even able to avoid the tomatoes for my son, who hates cooked tomato, buy only placing them into two-thirds of the dish.

From there, we progressed to Chilli Meatballs with Cheesy Nachos. Now I do understand that in no way can this be classed a dish that is remotely good for you. However, it does come into the category of “got to be done” and now we’ve done it, we’re satisfied. Until next time. *wink*

For Friday’s dinner, I had chosen “One-pot Chicken & Bacon Stew”, which looked to be far more difficult than it actually was. You can find the recipe for it here.

Considering everyone had clean plates at the end of the meal, I’d call that a success. Well, as it was involving chicken, bacon, white wine and cream, how on earth could it have failed to succeed? That combination Is almost guaranteed to impress.

However, all this was put into the shade by a muffin recipe. Well may you raise your eyebrows, but this is no ordinary muffin recipe but one for the lovely Brunch Muffins.

Now, again, how could anything involving bacon, cheese and spring onions not win anyone’s heart? Especially when the end result is fist-shaped and portable. Perfect Sunday morning food for boys, men and blog-writing mothers, alike.

Again – like most of the best recipes – it is dead easy.  You simply take 360g of self-raising flour, half a tablespoon of sugar, half a teaspoon of salt and combine them in a large bowl.

Take 100ml of vegetable oil, 2 large eggs, 300ml buttermilk or semi-skimmed milk and a grind or two of black pepper and combine them in a large jug.

Fry off 100g of diced streaky bacon until it’s starting to go brown, then 5-6 chopped spring onions until they’re softening.

Add the liquids to the flour mixture and whisk or beat until smooth, then add 70g grated mature cheddar cheese together with the bacon and onions and mix well.

Decant into six large muffin cases, sprinkle another 10g of cheese over them and bake in a moderate (190deg fan) oven until brown and a skewer comes out clean.

Then, fend off the hungry hordes until they are cool enough to eat (the muffins, that is, not the hordes) and arm yourself with tomato ketchup for the “can’t eat bacon without ketchup” members of the family.

My thanks go out to Lucinda Overington, for the Brunch Muffins’ recipe – without whom our Sunday mornings would have been markedly less enjoyable.

(First published 31.8.10 Bournemouth Echo "Taste" Pages)

Failure on the compatibility front

Lancaster & Spitfire at Bournemouth's Air Festival 2010

I know the aircraft don't have anything to do with food, but I liked the photograph so much, and it's representative of what was going on over the week!

This blog post first appeared in the Bournemouth Echo's online pages, here.

Well, I can safely say that I had a collection of really nice dinners this week – well, all excepting the Sicilian Style Fish Stew, but more of that later. However, I’m not really sure that the remainder of my family enjoyed them so much.

Son's bowl of chowder, complete with bite missing from bread.
(Photograph taken by son)

We kicked off the week with a Smoked Haddock Chowder, which always goes down well with everyone. This was no exception and made a great start to the week.

Next came what was billed on the Menu as “Tuna & Sweetcorn Salad” and was one of Hubby’s cooking nights. However, it transmogrified into a Tuna Salad Nicoise (albeit made with tinned tuna) and was really gorgeous. I loved the lemon vinaigrette dressing on the salad leaves and with some crusty bread, it made a handsome meal. Unfortunately, our son has decided that he doesn’t like tuna any more. This is peculiar as tinned tuna was, along with fish fingers, the denomination of fish we used to get him started with eating it. He will now eat most types, other than smoked mackerel – and tuna, now it seems. Darn! Foiled again.

We soldiered on and menu item no.3 appeared, which was Meatballs & Pasta. Now we’ve both made meatballs in various incarnations and with varying levels of success, to the point where now we can’t really face the lengthy process of mixing and rolling the little devils, nor the difficulty of finding room in the fridge for them to chill. I seriously think that other people must have two fridges, or alternatively nothing in their fridge to begin with. However, Hubby had come up with a blinder of an idea, which was to use some “extra special” sundried tomato & herb beef burgers which he broke into meatball sized pieces, rolled into a ball and hey presto – meatballs. What a triumph! I can recommend this procedure to all those Mums & Dads out there who are also suffering from meatball making fatigue. Perfect.

You’re probably all thinking “well, that all sounds successful, what’s she on about?”. You see, it all began to go downhill from hereon in.

 Next up on the menu list was the “Sicilian-style fish stew” for which I’d bought some fresh cod fillets and frozen them in advance. Never again. We have now decided that recipes including fresh fish shall only ever feature on a Tuesday or a Friday (both of which are shopping days, and don’t require the fish to be frozen).

Looks innocent enough, doesn't it?

The dish looks a picture, and indeed I really enjoyed the broth, but the fish tasted muddy and not right and the red kidney beans were like bullets, so much so that Hubby and I both got worn out trying to chomp our way through them. Hubby declared his portion inedible and son managed to do his best with it, but more went into the bin than ever got eaten. Still, one bright note was that the brown crusty rolls we had with it, were yummy!

Saturday’s dinner was Braised Chicken & beans, served with a carrot/swede mash. I chose this one, because we were keen to try a few dishes that used white wine, and this one did. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our usual standard of chicken breast and had to settle for the supermarket’s own brand, which was salty, watery and rubbery. Not a good start. Hubby declared the carrot/swede mash inedible, although neither son nor I could detect any problem with it. Son found himself somewhat challenged by the white wine in the sauce, but I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner – problems with the chicken excepted.

Owing to the failure of the last few dinners and the dismal day, I’d decided to make the most of our crop of rhubarb in the garden and made a Rhubarb Cobbler. It isn’t the standard type of cobbler, with “cobbles” placed upon the rhubarb and baked, it is a type where you mix together a batter (made with – American cup sizes – half a cup of sugar, half a cup of plain flour, half a cup of milk, 1 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt) and pour it over the rhubarb. I cooked the rhubarb for 3-4 minutes in the microwave, with a couple of tablespoons of sugar added, then poured the batter mix on top and baked at 180deg (fan) for 35-40 mins. The result is almost like a sponge, but with a gorgeously chewy texture. Add that to our beautiful rhubarb, and everyone had forgotten their dissatisfaction with their first course.

I can only hope that if the Sausage & Lentil Casserole I have planned for tomorrow goes wrong, the family is as easily cheered up by the Pineapple I’ve got for dessert!